Physicist: This is a classic philosophical question!
For a while, it was generally assumed that without matter distance and time would still exist. After all: why not? Time is time and space is space, and the material things in them are just “actors on a stage”. If you remove all the actors, the stage is still there.
That’s not a proof one way or the other, but it does present a salient point: “what’s the damn problem?”
However, that stance took a hit when relativity came along. First, Galilean relativity, that states that the physics describing how things move around works whether you yourself are moving or not. His example was someone dropping a stone from the mast of a ship: from the perspective of someone on the ship the stone falls in a straight line (along the mast), and from the perspective of someone on the shore it falls along a curved path. Both of those people perceive and describe the world exactly as though their “stage” were stationary around them. Point is; there’s no way to tell whether or not you’re the “correct one” just by chucking rocks about.
Time and space, as seen in Stephen Massicotte’s “The Clockmaker”. If Galilean relativity starts to sound too complex, keep in mind that it’s just talking about a stage and a clock.
The take-away from Galilean relativity is that, for any pair of events that happen at different times, perspectives moving with respect to each other (boat vs. shore) will see them happen at different relative locations. Say you’re floating in a void and two firecrackers go off, one after the other. If you’re moving in the right direction, at the right speed you can “catch” them both and see them both go off right in from of you (it’s important to have protective eye wear in an infinite void). From most perspectives the firecrackers went off in different places and you had to move to catch them, but from yours, you were stationary and they moved so that they would explode in the same place.
(Left) The firecrackers are sitting still and as the cloudthing whips past they explode. The explosions are in different places. (Right) The exact same situation, but with the cloudthing sitting still and the firecrackers exploding (in the same place) as they pass it. In relativity, there’s no way to tell which is “correct”. In both diagrams time points in the upward direction.
Still, there’s no problem with there being some particular “stage” with everything in the universe moving around on it. Heck, the Earth is moving all over the place, but you’d never notice. The important thing is that a given object will take up a given amount of space (have a set size) that everything can agree on, and will experience the same amount of time as everything else. In Galilean relativity, the size of objects, the distance between two events that happen at the same time, and time itself are all fixed. So the dude on the boat and the dude on the shore will always agree on what time it is, as well as how far apart they are at any moment.
The only problem so far is that you can’t tell what’s moving and what’s not. But there’s nothing to say that somebody out there is standing still.
The issues really start rolling in when you switch over to Einstein’s relativity (also known as “relativity”). Both Galilean and Einsteinian relativity state that all of physics works the same independent of movement, but Einstein’s relativity includes the added rule “the speed of light is the same to everything, regardless of how that thing is moving”.
That extra rule has a lot of weird consequences that you have to be some kind of Einstein to figure out.
Just like in Galilean relativity, different observers can disagree about where an event can happen, but unlike Galilean relativity, in Einstein’s relativity they can also disagree on when. Worse than that, the physical size of objects is different, and the duration of events is different, depending on how you’re moving. You genuinely cannot talk meaningfully about much time or space things “actually” take up.
What you can do, is establish a particular “reference frame”. Essentially, you measure time and distance from the perspective of some object (one might say “relative” to the object). In a single reference frame (from the perspective of anything moving at the same speed as the particular object) everything has a size and a position and a time. The unfortunate thing is that as soon as you look at the same things from a different reference frame, sizes, positions, times, and durations all change.
So finally, to the point. If there’s nothing at all in the universe to base a reference frame on, then how do you define distance and time? Keep in mind that you can’t point at a location and say “here” because there’s no you to do the pointing either. You can easily talk about the size and age of an object in the universe, but the “stage and clock” of the universe itself, on its own, has no particular size or age without something to reference.
Or maybe it does!
Impossible to tell for sure.
The clockmaker image was stolen, without pitty, from http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10034/1032914-325.stm.
The “cloudthing” is from Hertzfeldt’s opus: Rejected.
So then spacetime is just plain ol’ space in the absence of matter/mass?
Not even that!
The problem is that distances and times don’t make sense outside of some form of reference.
Let’s say we have a given reference frame and all positions and speeds of all objects at a given time in a matrix. Is it possible to transform that information to a different reference frame by a linear function? Is it like the change of bases? Or is this nonsense?
I just started Lee Smolin’s “Three Roads to Quantum Gravity” (Perseus Books, 2001) and he takes a definite side. His opinion is that space cannot be an empty stage (absolute space) any more than a sentence can remain a sentence with all the words removed. I’m still pondering that.
Beautiful!
Deep.
Let me answer by saying, with no references to neither “time or distance”, nothing can be used to describe an empty universe., The continuum it now exists in has no parameters, thereby making an empty universe impossible. It would simply be a part of the continuum.
time and distance were defined by humans there is no proof that they really exist or not one would say that when we move we cover distance and when things happen they require time to occur but it is just our means to describe things which surely are helpful to us but not necessary that true .in the question the important thing is not that Do time and distance exist in a completely empty universe? but the important thing is how you will define this empty universe? the basic parameters of our thinking are time and distance and if they are taken away then we have nothing to define empty universe.for example if you say that large black voids with nothing in them is empty universe then your imagination itself has included both time and distance,because darkness will be spread over a distance and nothing present or we can say that nothing has developed as time has come to a pause .
I think we don’t have to measure something to know it exists, as long as it has been measured before. Even more so the dimension we were using to measure it by. So if you took everything out of this universe, time, being a dimension*, would assuredly still be going on at any point for speeds less than light, despite the fact that we have no reference for that point nor anything there to experience it. To say that we may not think of time and distance in regarding such an empty universe is to beg the question, surely. And the words in the sentence analogy fails because a sentence has no dimensions beyond its words – unless you include the paper it was written on.
* (Time must be a dimension of the universe rather than matter and energy because our relative experiences of it, as effect, cannot also be the sole cause or measure of it. Otherwise, what is the effect? What are we measuring?)
Fresh link for “Rejected”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuOvqeABHvQ
What assumptions can be made about a planet whose day is equivalent to 1000 earth days? Can anything be assumed about the planet’s size or distance form earth?
Pretty much any planet can turn at pretty much any speed. There basically nothing you can say about a planet’s size or location based on it having a 1000-Earth-day day.
Hi, nice website. Whenever I Google phys/maths I invariably always get directed here. Would you be able to expand on the topic by reference to the thermodynamic arrow of time (entropy) at all? i.e. If all the matter in the universe were to suddenly disappear, there would be no moving particles to infer time from? Thanks.
I hadn’t thought of that, but that’s true! Without anything to define entropy on there shouldn’t be a good way to tell if the “film is being played forward or backward”.
I think your explanation was referring to special relativity only when you described the impact of “Einstein’s relativity.” Wouldn’t GR speak more directly to this question, since “matter tells space how to curve?” GR tells us that “the stage” changes if we start removing the players, and doesn’t have any form at all if there’s no mass/energy at all.
Also, the SR effect that “when” and “where” don’t have fixed values without a frame of reference might not count as a full answer to the original question, since that’s true whether the universe is empty or full of stuff. SR instead gives an alternative to time and space (“space-time”) that does provide objective locations (“events”) and measurable separation between them (“intervals”). I suspect we can talk meangfully about this “stage” in an empty SR universe. For instance, even if we knew that all the matter in the universe was about to disappear, we could calculate the interval between the point in space time where I posted this comment and the point in space time at which the next president would have been sworn in. Hopefully we would find better things to do with our remaining time, but in an SR universe that calculation would be possible. Once we add in/switch to GR, that wouldn’t make any sense.
Factoring the vacuum energy of “empty space” into this whole discussion is… left as an exercise for the reader.
How could you have an “empty universe” ,as the question was posed, how can there be space without bodies within the space to thus define it. And vice-versa, how could you have the bodies without the space in which they may exist in. Either one is impossible without the other it seems.
@SM, do you think the following alternative question sheds any light on the original?
“If everything in our universe were suddenly removed, would it still make sense to talk about time and space?” There are at least two ways of thinking about this question, “would time and space still exist” and “could anyone say anything interesting about it?.”
Gallilean relativity suggested that the second (“epistemological”) question should probably be answered “no.” But that doesn’t resolve the first “metaphysical” question, at least according to Newton who followed and appreciated Gallileo but still unselfconsciously talked as if space and time were absolute.
I think Newton woud have been reasonably comfortable discussing e.g. what would happen in this universe after some supernatural event simultaneously removed every object in it. He could still assign coordinates to where Jupiter would have been next year, could tell you how you would have had to orient your telescope to spot Jupiter at midnight on December 1st. It would all be relative to where e.g. Cambridge “would have been,” but that’s merely an epistemological challenge not a metaphysical one — space would still be there, even if you would have trouble mapping your location without landmarks.
I think Leibnitz, a contemporary of Newton, might have disagreed. He might feel that it couldn’t be the same universe if pretty much anything were removed, since the relationships among things would be profoundly altered.
Fast forwarding to the 20th century, I think Special Relativity sharpens the epistemological problem, and General Relativity introduces a serious challenge to whether space would really be there at all if everything were removed. According to SR, casually referring to “midnight on December 1st” is simplistic, since even when there were observers they wouldn’t agree on the date. According to GR, Leibnitz was basically right: space-time is defined as a relationship among all the things in it.
@Mitch, thanks for the reply.
To your alternate question: “…would time and space still exist?” Sometimes I like to trace back the original meanings of words as I find it can shed some light on things. The etymology of the word “exist” is ultimately from latin: to stand forth, to emerge, appear. From this, you could reword your question “…would time and space still emerge”, or in other words, without the things within space/time from where would space/time emerge. I know, this sounds awkward, but the reverse might be a little more cogent: without (empty) space/time, from where would the things within it emerge from? Or, the part standing out from the whole, the part by itself doesn’t really make any sense. The perspectives of SR, GR and Leibnitz are largely in agreement with this, in that the relative nature of things are due to their mutual interdependence.
And so the question of whether space/time exists without the bodies within it maybe is analogous to questioning whether there would still exist backs if all fronts were removed. Or how could you have a “back” without a corresponding “front”. From the Buddhist perspective, one indian scholar on Sunyata (emptiness – all things being empty of inherent existence) was quoted as saying: “Everything that exists does so dependently and everything that is dependently existent necessarily lacks independent objective existence.” Maybe some taoist somewhere might say that the object cannot be without the subject observing it.
the solution to this seeming dilemma is rather simple if we introduce the concept of NIHILO…nothingness in english.The nothingness cant simply be defined and nothing,much less space and distance,is even remotely thinkable of anything existing in something which,by definition,doesn’t exist.And even if this were possible,which is not of course,time presupposes for its flowing the steady beating of matter,be it an electron orbiting its nucleus or anything similar,fully missing in an empty universe,proving this that time cant exist without matter.Distance would equally be a non sense in an empty universe,for there would be no measurable distances amongst objects.
So,the answer is clear :no time and distances can ever exist in an empty universe,which itself couldn’t be called this way any longer,owing its name to the presence of material objects in it
What astounds me most about great thinkers in math and science is when they sense that they are wrong about something. The Greeks knew there was something out of place about the 5th postulate. It didn’t look like the others, it was longer and more complicated and they really REALLY felt that it should’ve been possible to derive it but they couldn’t so they made it a postulate and then hid their faces in shame.
Likewise Newton knew there was something though few take time to point it out. Somewhere in the first three pages of the Principia he states very clearly, and bluntly that he can’t explain either time or space. He says, “time, existing in and of itself, immutable and unchanging”. Then he says the same of space. He KNOWS or at least suspects that just “assuming” that is correct is simply the best he could do. By stating it before anything else he draws attention to it and admits that his work must be fundamentally incomplete.
Both of those simply astound me.
Completely empty space is the basis of everything
http://vk.com/tviss
Do time and distance exist in a completely empty universe? The point-blank answer is NO. This conclusion is actually inevitable, based on verified scientific facts and logical deduction. (It is based on my paper entitled “Time and Space” which was approved for publication by Professor Kip S Thorne, who is a world authority on General Relativity.)
Although this may sound surprising, time and space are actually concepts invented by us observers based on our human experience. This can be scientifically proven with evidence from the theory of relativity, together with something about relativity that Einstein himself had not realized. This is the fact that Einstein’s second postulate of relativity — that the speed of light is constant relative to all inertial frames of reference — is not actually a fundamental law of nature but a consequence of the fact that we have defined time and space in accordance with how we experience the universe.
It is a scientific fact that the rate our body functions is governed by the rate of electromagnetic transmission, since all cells and all organs in our body function via electromagnetism. This means that if we use our conscious experience as the standard for defining our time, we have actually defined time by the rate of electromagnetic transmission, which is the speed of light. That is why the speed of light is always constant — we have actually defined it to be so!
What this means is that we have also defined time and space according to our conscious experience (which depends on the speed of light). That explains why, in relativity, time and space distort depending on the observer’s state of motion. In other words, time and space have to vary in accordance with the experience of the observer. This in turn means that, without the observer, it does not even make sense to talk in terms of time and space.
I am afraid it is extremely difficult to explain all this fully in a short answer. A more detailed explanation can be found in my article “Relativity Proves that Time and Space are Empty of Inherent Existence.” http://kenneth-chan.com/physics/relativity-proves-time-space-empty-inherent-existence/. It is probably necessary to look at this longer explanation to fully understand what I am trying to convey.
If we had stayed in the trees, then Space and time,would not exist. OUTRAGEOUS I hear you cry . But Space and time would still exist, even if we had not evolved. Yes but we would not know about it, would we ? And so, from our perspective, it would not. In other words Space and time are man made, so if you took all the stuff out of it , and I meen ALL the stuff, then you would have a big fat nothing. and that’s what we had before the big bang was invented by the experts to give them a starting point. Because the only thing you can get from nothing is nothing, unless you add a few random bits and bobs, and call it a singularity and hope nobody noticed. I hope that’s put what’s it’s, dead and alive cat, in the right flock of pigeons.
If you’re moving in the right direction, at the right speed you can “catch” them both and see them both go off right in from of you (it’s important to have protective eye wear in an infinite void). From most perspectives the firecrackers went off in different places and you had to move to catch them, but from yours, you were stationary and they moved so that they would explode in the same place.
It’s impossible to say since there would not be anyone present to see if it is or isn’t.
Do virtual particles form temporarily in this empty universe before annihilating again?